The creators

Profile: Notch

Full name: Markus Alexej Persson

Role: Minecraft creator, co-founder of Mojang 

Notch was born in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1979. He began programming at the age of seven, and produced his first game at eight! After creating Minecraft, he co-founded Mojang to develop the game. Notch has over 1,940,000 Twitter followers. He handed over Minecraft development to Jens Bergensten before Mojang was acquired by Microsoft.

Profile: Jeb

Full name: Jens Bergensten 

Role: Minecraft lead developer

Jeb was born in Sweden in 1979, and took over from Notch as lead developer for Minecraft in 2012. He currently has over 1,222,000 Twitter followers and is well known for his work on redstone repeaters, wolves, climbing spiders and pistons.

The history of Minecraft 

2009

May: Notch begins on his game idea, and quits his job to concentrate on it full-time. As work progresses he calls it Cave Game. He releases the first version to the public and calls it Minecraft The first accounts are registered and the official Minecraft forum opens.

December: Minecraft moves to 'in development' stage. Lots of things are added, including crafting.

2010

January: 100,000 registered Minecrafters!

June: Minecraft reaches Alpha stage. At this point Survival was the only mode available, but game updates began to come fast. Sales of the game hit 200,000.

August: First ever MineCon is held in Washington state. 50 people attended.

December: Minecraft wins Indie Game of the Year from IndieDB. Minecraft Beta is released. Additions include egg-throwing and constant splash text on the main

menu page. 

2011

January: Minecraft wins GDC Award for Best Debut Game, Best Downloadable Game and Game Innovation Spotlight.

July: 10 million registered Minecrafters!

October: The Pocket Edition of Minecraft is released for Android.

December: MineCon held in Las Vegas. 5,000 people attend. During MineCon, Minecraft is officially out of Beta.

2012 

March: Minecraft version 1.2.1 is released. New additions include the Jungle biome, ocelots, cats and Iron golems. 

May: Minecraft for Xbox 360 is released. It sells 400,000 copies in the first 24 hours!

November: MineCon is held at Disneyland, Paris. There are 6,500 attendees.

December: Minecraft sells 453,000 copies of the game across all platforms on Christmas Eve alone!

2013

January: Minecraft sales reach 20,000,000 on PC/Mac, Xbox 360 and mobile devices!

March: Minecraft version 1.5 [The Redstone Update] is released. New additions include redstone-related blocks such as activator rails, redstone blocks, daylight sensors, comparators, trapped chest and weighted pressure plates as well as Nether quartz and quartz blocks.

April: Minecraft Pocket Edition and PC/Mac Editions have sold more than 10,000,000 copies each.

July: Minecraft version 1.6 [The Horse Update] is released. New additions include horses, donkeys, mules, skeleton and zombies horses, horse armour, hay bales, carpet and hardened and stained clay blocks.

October: Minecraft 1.7.2 [The Update that Changed the World] is released. It includes new biomes, blocks and types of fish.

December: Minecraft for PlayStation 3 is released.

2014

June: Sales of Console Editions surpass sales for PC/Mac